Luke Grizzell, above, a 16-year-old from Florissant, was born without a left hand but excels at youth hockey. In the photo at left, Stars teammates Grizzell (far left) and Cody Johnson pass the puck during a High Altitude League summer high school game against the Maple Leafs at Sertich Ice Center in Colorado Springs.

COLORADO SPRINGS — Luke Grizzell plays competitive hockey with no left hand. Why, the 16-year-old resident of Florissant wants to know, is this so astonishing to other people?

“It’s not a big deal to me. I guess I’m pretty determined to do what I want and prove other people wrong,” he said.

Stubborn might be the best word to describe Grizzell, who will be a junior in high school this fall. Most likely, that will be at Woodland Park, though if the school doesn’t add a hockey team, as is being talked about, he may opt to transfer to a Colorado Springs school that has one. That’s how serious he is about the game, one he didn’t start playing until two years ago.

That in itself makes Grizzell’s hockey story unusual. The fact that he was born without a left hand? Yeah, that too. But watching him play in the High Altitude Hockey summer league in Colorado Springs, it is not very noticeable that he plays a sport that’s tough enough with two hands.

“His coach last year, it was like the third practice before he even noticed,” said Grizzell’s father, Wayne. “We’ve never come across anything that he can’t figure out how to do. He laces up his own skates, for example, and I couldn’t even begin to explain to him how to do that with one hand.”

Grizzell’s coach with High Altitude, Jimmy Toombs, no longer is surprised at how much Grizzell can do.

“I remember the first time I noticed it and said to him, ‘Well, how much can you really do out there?’ and he said, ‘Everything, no problem,’ ” Toombs said. “And he was right. Yeah, a couple of times the stick has come off his left hand, but not very often, and he can pass and shoot like everyone else.”

Why the otherwise perfectly healthy Grizzell was born without a left hand has been a mystery to him and his family, though a disorder named Amniotic Band Syndrome — in which extremities can be entangled in fetal tissue before birth and be disfigured — is a possible cause. Grizzell has a left wrist, but no hand or fingers.

The impairment never interfered much with Grizzell’s love of hunting and fishing or other physical activities, but organized sports seemed out of the question for a time. But Grizzell, who was born in Michigan and loved watching hockey — especially his beloved Detroit Red Wings — decided to try playing with a midget team in Woodland Park in the winter of 2009.

At first, he put a ski mitten over the wrist and essentially trapped the stick between his arm and midsection to control it. He soon became frustrated and retreated to a backyard workshop to try to develop a better glove.

“We were kicking around ideas after a game one day, what he could do,” his father said. “We’d tried some prosthetics and things like that, but in addition to being obscenely expensive, Luke almost has too much of a left hand for anything to be able to stick on the end and be effective. He disappeared into his room for a couple of hours and came out with a piece of canvas with a pouch in it to put the stick in.

“We took it to a bootmaker in Colorado Springs, and he studied it and made something out of leather that was more sturdy and laced up. That’s gone through a few revisions, where he tweaks it here and there. He doesn’t have a way to grip the stick but is able to keep pressure on it.”

A right-handed shooter, Grizzell is able to seemingly do everything other players can, but he is aware of his limitations.

“If by some miracle I’m able to do something with hockey in the future, I’d sure be on board, but that’s probably not too likely,” he said. “I like to skate and hit people and just try to help my team.”

Grizzell admits he gets down sometimes because of his impairment.

“I did that even just today,” he said during a recent interview. “But every time I do that, I just tell myself to snap out of it, and I do. I haven’t found anything yet that I couldn’t do when I wanted to do it.”

Avalanche defenseman Erik Johnson had butterflies before Sunday's game against the Detroit Red Wings. It wasn't because of the big-name opponent, but rather his return from a 13-game injury absence and being stoked to rejoin a team in a playoff push and looking for its third postseason appearance in 10 years.